GT

Sunday, 12 May 2013

Individual Post 5: Narrative Structure

On it's way to the climax, this book will often go
from rising action to falling action and back again. I know this is quite
common among longer books. It wouldn't be exciting if it were the same rising
action for 200 or even 300 pages. However, one very unique thing I found was I
couldn’t really choose 1 specific chapter for the climax. The action continues
to rise after what one may think of as the point for falling action to begin.
Also, there are really only one to two chapters of introduction, or exposition.
You learn more as the book progresses. Now, I think this can repel readers by
giving them too little information and them thinking, “uh, ok, but no thanks. I
don’t know enough to actually understand what is happening.” But, there is a
flipside. Readers can be drawn in by the lack of information and the knowledge
that there must be more inside.

So, to go a little more in depth
about the exposition, the strategy Farmer used was interesting. She gave the
only chapter in the book not from Matt’s perspective to the man who was given
the task of getting at least one Matt to be born. This, I found, only served as
a way to gain info on the backstory, and could mislead readers to think that
the chapters would be from different perspectives.

Next are the series of rising and
falling actions leading to the end of the book. There seemed to be one of these
for each of the times when a major change occurred in Matt. Either he found out
something, or interacted with someone to result in a plot twist (usually
although, sometimes there were opinion changes). Towards the end of the book,
it became apparent that no falling action was happening. It was a dissatisfying
cliffhanger end that left you trying to piece together what would happen to Matt.
The author to my knowledge also wasn’t going to write a sequel – but apparently
one is coming out around September of this year.

I personally think there was no
falling action really because Farmer wanted the readers to make up their
own individual versions of what happened to Matt, María, Celia, Esperanza, the
lost boys, and the US and Aztlán. But I don’t feel we can do that, because
Farmer knows Matt better than any of us.

(I chose not to include specific evidence because I wanted to focus specifically
on the structure, not the story)